Huancayo 1

Hola everyone,

I haven´t written in a while because i have been working on getting my feet on the ground. It has been a little tough adjusting to life here due to the fact that i know little spanish, but that is changing. The family I am living with is great and keeps me on my toes with my spanish vocab. I have also met loads of great locals and travellers.

The boys orphanage I work at is a great facility. It is state funded so there is no lack of food or necessary supplies. At the moment, I am working with 7 different individuals with special needs living at the orphanage. As I am only going to be working here for about 3 months I am working to learn about the children and educate some of the staff about what I know. There is one individual, Ramerio, who is 20 years old and has been diagnosed with severe autism. He is a handful but a fun person. We did run into a problem beacause he found a cactus called tona (not sure if the spelling is right) and decided to eat it. Eating Tona is normal here, and very delicious, but that is after you peal it. You can guess what happened but Ramerio is good now.

Hunacayo is surrounded by many beautiful mountains but this makes living with the altitude interesting. I am living at about 10,500 feet. It definitly took some time to adjust to and i´m still not fully there yet. haha. Yesterday i played a soocer game at the orphanage and i felt like passing out after the first three mintues of the game. haha. it was good fun though.

The food is great here but it also takes some getting used to. That is all i really need to share there.

Everything else is great and Huancayo is a great place once you get to know it.

adios